Almost a decade ago, the British people voted decisively to take back control from Brussels. Now Keir Starmer is seeking to put the EU back in charge.
He is doing so without any mandate, and in direct contradiction of previous pledges given to the public. Nowhere is this more true than on the issue of immigration.
Last week, the Prime Minister launched his new, supposedly tougher approach to border controls – so tough in its language that some on the Left accused him of adopting the rhetoric of Enoch Powell.
But the latest round of negotiations with Brussels will make a complete mockery of any robust new policy on immigration by the acceptance of free movement into Britain of EU citizens aged 18 to 30.
It culminates in a meet-up at Lancaster House today that is officially to discuss ‘dynamic alignment’ between the UK and the EU, but has already been dubbed ‘the Surrender Summit’, where the term ‘reset in relations’ is really code for ‘Remain will prevail’.
At a stroke, the floodgates will be opened ever wider, the exact opposite of what the British people voted for on June 23, 2016 – the date Nigel Farage dubbed our ‘Independence Day’. This is not just the thin end of the wedge. It is a wrecking ball that is going to demolish key features of our border controls.
According to one analysis published yesterday, new, more generous routes to EU citizenship will add three to four million people to the continent’s population by 2030.
Many of these will be migrants who hail from Africa, the Middle East or Asia and are in line to become naturalised EU citizens before the end of the decade, as a result of the recently introduced rules.
Last week, the Prime Minister launched his new, supposedly tougher approach to border controls – so tough in its language that some on the Left accused him of adopting the rhetoric of Enoch Powell
According to one analysis published yesterday, new, more generous routes to EU citizenship will add three to four million people to the continent’s population by 2030
Politicians have long struggled to be honest with the public about the real nature of the European Project, which is to build a federal, unified superstate
Most of these new EU citizens will be under the age of 30 and, if Starmer’s capitulation is adopted, they will have full rights to move here.
Labour explicitly promised at the election and in its aftermath that the new Government would not back an EU youth mobility scheme.
In September, the Prime Minister said he had ‘no plans’ for such a scheme, an assertion that was backed in the same month by his Europe minister Nick Thomas Symonds, who told Parliament that ‘we have no plans for an EU-wide youth mobility scheme and there will be no return to free movement’.
Now we can file these assurances in the same wastepaper bin as the promise not to raise National Insurance and the pledge to lower our energy bills.
But such misleading claims are typical of the entire debate about Britain’s relations with the EU.
Politicians have long struggled to be honest with the public about the real nature of the European Project, which is to build a federal, unified superstate.
Instead, with the exception of the Brexiteers, they resort to deceit and deception to conceal the reality of Britain’s reduction in status to that of a regional province in an empire governed by an unaccountable, unelected bureaucracy in Brussels.
When the Tory prime minister Ted Heath began talks to take our country into the European Community in 1971, he blithely promised that ‘joining the community does not entail a loss of national identity or an erosion of essential national sovereignty’.
Yet Heath had been warned by his civil servants that the step had ‘revolutionary long-term implications’, with ‘all the basic instruments of national economic management handed over to central federal authorities’.
Dishonesty runs right through this story, from John Major boasting that he had won ‘game, set and match’ at Maastricht in 1992 to the claim by Tony Blair’s government – eager to downplay the impact of immigration – that just 13,000 Eastern Europeans would settle here when their countries joined the EU in 2004. In the end, millions came, transforming the fabric of our society.
And we are not being told the truth now.
The reality is that the Blob has won. Democracy is about to be overturned by a cynical political establishment that has never believed in our freedom.
In our Labour Prime Minister, a classic metropolitan lawyer more concerned with globalist rules and progressive gesture politics than national sovereignty, the pro-EU brigade has found the ideal champion for its cause of subverting Brexit.
This is, after all, the politician who did everything he could in Parliament to obstruct the will of the British people over that 2016 referendum, most notably in his drive for a second vote.
Just as Sir Keir notoriously went down on one knee to show his support for the Black Lives Matter campaign during the turbulent summer of 2020, so he now adopts a cravenly submissive approach in his Government’s negotiations for a new deal with the European Union.
The value of our trade with the EU is more than £800 billion (we import goods worth £450 billion and export £350 billion). These figures should give Sir Keir’s Government tremendous leverage in the talks, since the British market is clearly vital to European prosperity.
Yet Starmer and his team have shown desperation rather than determination. On so many fronts they prefer retreat to resolution, allowing the EU to dictate terms.
European officials speak of the improved atmosphere in the negotiations since Labour came to power last July.
‘The ambiance has changed. There is mutual trust,’ said one Eurocrat at the weekend.
But such language could indicate that Labour are seen as pushovers, partly because they instinctively have faith in the ideology of integration and partly because their plummeting popularity leaves them vulnerable to pressure.
The new Lancaster House settlement looks likely to end in humiliation, with EU fishermen granted greater rights to operate in our waters, our participation in a European army and a promise to hand over exorbitant sums to gain access to defence procurement and scientific research programmes.
The direction of travel in the EU is always towards the destruction of national rights in the drive for federal unification. ‘Ever closer union’ is the very reason for the bloc’s existence.
The British people recognised this, which is why they voted for Brexit. The likely outcome of today’s talks will amount to a shabby, undemocratic betrayal of this plebiscite. We will alight on the worst of all worlds – ruled once more by Brussels and deprived of our basic liberties.
